Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(65)

She hadn’t been expecting that move. And now he was on top of her, his body between her arms, separating her knife from the hand that could unsheathe it, and he shocked her again, shoving his fingers into her mouth, wrenching her jaw open and pouring the damn beer down her throat.

“DRINK THE FUCKING BEER, HONEY!”

Jesus. He must have drugged the beer.

She tried to spit it out, but he was pouring it so fast, his hand was wedged so hard between her teeth, that she was drowning and choking, and her body defied her brain and made her swallow. And keep swallowing.

She had not been strong. She had not been ready. Jesse was going to win again. He was going to take her from herself again. Make her into what he wanted.

When the can was empty, he let her go and sat back against the bed, panting. “It’ll be okay now, Willy. I love you, and it’s gonna be fine now.”

Adrenaline had supercharged her body’s processes, and already she could feel whatever he’d dosed her with bubbling in her blood, making her limbs seem not her own. But her mind was still her own. For now.

Coughing, sputtering, spitting out what she could, Willa put her hand up her sleeve—he seemed never to have felt that she had something under there—and drew her grandfather’s knife.

Confusion pulled Jesse’s features inward as he stared at the knife. Before he could make sense, and before she could lose hers, Willa threw herself forward and sank the blade into his chest.

When she’d made her plan, soaking in her bathtub, she’d intended to make a single, careful thrust—into his heart—so that he would bleed out quickly but internally and not leave a mess.

In reality, soaked in drugged beer, feeling the effects of it sinking into her muscles, she stabbed and stabbed and stabbed until she couldn’t hold the knife anymore.

Then, kneeling over his dying body, she made herself vomit, trying to get what she could out of her before it was too late.

With the last bit of her sense, she crawled to the nightstand and pulled the phone down. There was a little sticker across the back of the handset. The letters wavered in her vision, but she thought it said Local Calls $1 Charged to Room Press 9.

She pressed 9 and dialed Rad’s pager. When it was time to leave a number, she squinted at the sticker on the base and keyed in the numbers she saw, plus 911. Then another 911 for good measure. She’d almost hung up before she remembered to add 14.



oOo



The ringing phone sounded like it was underwater. Or maybe she was underwater. A hundred miles away. Willa didn’t know why it wouldn’t stop. Shhhh. Stop.

Baby, it’s me. Pick it up.

Rad? Why was he here? Where was here?

God, the ringing wouldn’t stop.

She rolled and flailed around until she slapped at the hard plastic of a phone. When she picked it up, it went quiet. Relieved, she dropped it.

“Willa? Baby, are you there? Willa! Goddammit!”

With Rad’s voice whispering through the deep water that had filled her mind, Willa remembered that she needed him. She needed help. She couldn’t remember why, but she needed him to be here. To help her.

“Help me,” she said, trying to be heard through the water. “Help me.”





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN



“Willa! Willa! FUCK! WILLA!”

Rad felt a hand on his shoulder, and Dane said, “You’re pullin’ a lot of heads this way, brother. What’s the trouble?”

Afraid to hang up, to lose the scant connection with her he had, Rad clutched the handset of the payphone in a fist that had begun to shake.

That faint voice, nowhere near the receiver: Help me. Help me.

“WILLA!”

“Rad! Talk to me. What is wrong? Where is she?”

He’d gotten the page on the road: a number he didn’t know, Tulsa exchange, and 91191114 after it. There were so many numbers, more than the screen would hold without scrolling, and it took him a beat to make sense of it and be sure that the 14 was really Willa paging him. That cute thing she’d pointed out, how ‘14’ upside down was ‘hi.’ Their little code that always made him smile. Sometimes, she’d page him only those two numerals, not expecting him to call back. Just a ‘hi,’ to let him know she was thinking of him.

Once he’d recognized that the page was Willa in trouble, he’d surged ahead of the two-club formation and pulled off at the next exit. They’d been planning to pull off there anyway, gas up and eat at the truck stop before stopping in Signal Bend for the night, but Rad had had no plans in his mind at that point but getting to Willa.

At the bank of pay phones near the entrance of the truck stop diner, he’d called the number. After the first ten digits, there’d been a beep, and, guessing that it wanted an extension, he’d keyed 105, the next numbers, those right before the 91191114. It had rung and rung before he’d heard the harsh rattle of a handset being manhandled, and then nothing. He’d called her name, and again, and finally heard just those soft, slurred words: Help me. Help me.

They were in Eureka, Missouri. More than three-hundred-fifty miles from home. From Willa.

Bile churned in his belly. “I don’t know! She’s in trouble! She’s there but I think she’s passed out! I don’t know this f*ckin’ number! I don’t know where she is! Jesus CHRIST!”